Several Antivirus packages these days will offer to scan USB devices when inserted, but sometimes this option is buried in the settings and not automatically enabled. And with that in mind, there’s always a chance that it could have been infected and other types of malicious files might have been transferred onto it along the way. The problem with removable USB devices is they are so portable that the drive could have been plugged into several other computers before it comes back to you. Thankfully in Windows XP and above the Autorun.inf virus issue is now pretty much redundant as the inf file no longer gets executed by default in Windows when it’s inserted and so the malicious file cannot get launched.
When you insert the device into a computer, the autorun file then executes the program it’s told to which in many cases can be malicious file, and then you have a problem on your hands. In more recent years, one of the most common ways for a virus to spread itself has been through the autorun.inf file that resides on the root of your removable device such as a USB stick or hard drive.
